Wheelmen: Lance Armstrong, the Tour de France, and the Greatest Sports Conspiracy Ever

The first in-depth look at Lance Armstrong's doping scandal, the phenomenal business success built on the back of fraud, and the greatest conspiracy in the history of sports. Lance Armstrong won a record-smashing seven Tours de France after staring down cancer, and in the process became an international symbol of resilience and courage. In a sport constantly dogged by blood-doping scandals, he seemed above the fray. Then, in January 2013, the legend imploded. He admitted doping during the Tours and, in an interview with Oprah, described his "mythic, perfect story" as "one big lie."

The Climb: The Autobiography

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of the revealing, inspirational memoir from the British winner of the Tour de France. The Climb tells the extraordinary story of Chris Froome's journey from a young boy in Kenya, riding through townships and past wild animals, and with few opportunities for an aspiring cyclist, to his unforgettable yellow jersey victory in the 2013 Tour de France.

Shut Up, Legs!: My Wild Ride on and off the Bike

Beloved German cyclist Jens Voigt isn't a superstar in the traditional sense of the word. Although he won three stages of the Tour de France - and wore the yellow jersey twice - Voigt never claimed an overall victory. He became a star because he embodies qualities that go beyond winning and losing: sacrifice, selflessness, reliability, and devotion. European and American crowds were drawn to his aggressive riding style, outgoing nature, and refreshing realness.

Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong

The definitive account of Lance Armstrong's spectacular rise and fall. In June 2013, when Lance Armstrong fled his palatial home in Texas, downsizing in the face of multimillion-dollar lawsuits, Juliet Macur was there - talking to his girlfriend and children and listening to Armstrong's version of the truth. She was one of the few media members aside from Oprah Winfrey to be granted extended one-on-one access to the most famous pariah in sports. At the center of Cycle of Lies is Armstrong himself, revealed through face-to-face interviews.

The Rules: The Way of the Cycling Disciple

The Velominati embrace cycling as a way of life, as obsessed with style, heritage, authenticity, and wisdom as with performance. This is their bible. The Rules is an essential part of every cyclist’s kit - whether you’re riding to work or training to be the next Bradley Wiggins or Victoria Pendleton. Winning awards and gaining millions of viewers, Velominati.com has become an online cycling mecca. In 92 canonical rules, these masters of the peloton share tips on gear, tell stories from cycling’s legendary hardmen, and enforce the etiquette of the road - with a healthy, often sinister sense of humor.

For professional cyclists, going faster and winning are, of course, closely related. Yet surprisingly, for many, a desire to go faster is much more important than a desire to win. Someone who wants to go faster will work at the details and take small steps rather than focusing on winning. Winning just happens when you do everything right - it's the doing everything right that's hard. And that's what fascinates and obsesses Michael Hutchinson.

My Time

On 22 July 2012 Bradley Wiggins became the first British man ever to win the Tour de France. In an instant, 'Wiggo' became a national hero. Ten days later, having swapped his yellow jersey for the colours of Team GB, he won Olympic gold in the time trial, adding to his previous six medals to become the nation's most decorated Olympian of all time. Outspoken, honest, intelligent and fearless, Wiggins has been hailed as the people’s champion.

Wide-Eyed and Legless: Inside the Tour de France

Named ‘The No. 1 Cycling Book of All Time’ by Cycle Sport, Wide-Eyed and Legless is a fast-paced, fly-on-the-wall story of courage, endurance, bungling, rows and cheating in sport's greatest marathon. In 1987, the Tour was won by Irishman Stephen Roche. It was the first time the champion had hailed from outside the Continent or the States and the first time in 20 years a British team - ANC Halfords - had competed in the world's toughest and craziest race.

Sean Yates: It's All About the Bike

Before Bradley Wiggins, there was Sean Yates. Behind Bradley Wiggins, there was Sean Yates. One of only five Britons to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France, Sean Yates burst onto the cycling scene as the rawest pure talent this country has ever seen. After turning professional at the age of 22, he soon became known as a die-hard domestique, putting his body on the line for his teammates.

The Doper Next Door: My Strange and Scandalous Year on Performance-Enhancing Drugs

What happens to a regular guy who dopes? Surprised to learn that pro athletes aren’t the only ones taking performance-enhancing substances, journalist Andrew Tilin goes in search of the average juicing Joe, hoping to find a few things out: Why would normal people take these substances? Where do folks get them? Does the stuff really work? But these controversial drugs often silence their users, and so his queries might have gone unanswered had Tilin not looked in the mirror and succumbed to curiosity....

It's All About the Bike: The Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels

Robert Penn has saddled up nearly every day of his adult life. In his late 20s, he pedaled 25,000 miles around the world. Today he rides to get to work, sometimes for work, to bathe in air and sunshine, to travel, to go shopping, to stay sane, and to skip bath time with his kids. He's no Sunday pedal pusher. So when the time came for a new bike, he decided to pull out all the stops. He would build his dream bike, the bike he would ride for the rest of his life; a customized machine that reflects the joy of cycling.

How Bad Do You Want It?: Mastering the Pshchology of Mind over Muscle

The greatest athletic performances spring from the mind, not the body. Elite athletes have known this for decades, and now science is learning why it's true. In his fascinating new book, How Bad Do You Want It?, coach Matt Fitzgerald examines more than a dozen pivotal races to discover the surprising ways elite athletes strengthen their mental toughness.

The Rider

With The Rider, Tim Krabbé has created a book unique in the ranks of sporting literature. He describes one 150-kilometre race in just 150 pages. In the course of the narrative, we get to know the forceful, bumbling Lebusque, the aesthete Barthelemy, the Young Turk Reilhan, and the mysterious rider from Cycles Goff'. Krabbé battles with and against each of them in turn, failing on the descents, shining on the climbs, suffering on the (false) flats.

The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez

Decades after Richard Ramirez left 13 dead and paralyzed the city of Los Angeles, his name is still synonymous with fear, torture, and sadistic murder. Philip Carlo's classic The Night Stalker, based on years of meticulous research and extensive interviews with Ramirez, revealed the killer and his horrifying crimes to be even more chilling than anyone could have imagined. The story of Ramirez is a bizarre and spellbinding descent into the very heart of human evil.

In 2007, Chrissie Wellington shocked the triathlon world by winning the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii. As a newcomer and a complete unknown to the press, Chrissie's win shook up the sport. A Life without Limits is the story of her rise to the top, a journey that has taken her around the world, from a childhood in England, to the mountains of Nepal, to the oceans of New Zealand, to the trails of Argentina, and finally, across the finish line. A Life without Limits reveals the heart behind her success.

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company's early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world's most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands.

Triumphs and Turbulence: My Autobiography

In 2001, when the bible of the sport, Cycling Weekly, ran a poll to decide the greatest British cyclist, Chris Boardman's was the name that topped the list. It was Boardman's lone achievements in the '80s and '90s - Olympic track gold, the world hour record, repeatedly claiming the yellow jersey in the Tour de France - that lit the spark for modern British cycling. His endeavours both on and off the bike have made him the founding father of current golden generation - without him there would simply be no Hoy, Wiggins or Cavendish.

Tour de France

In this updated edition of the highly acclaimed Tour de France, Graeme Fife sets the 2012 race in the context of the event's remarkable history, stretching back to July 1903. Combining meticulous research with a pacy narrative style, he penetrates the mystique of the race and paints a colourful picture of the men whose exploits have given the Tour an enduring universal appeal. Moreover, the book now celebrates a truly historic event: The 99th edition of the race was won, for the first time, by a Briton.

The Obree Way: A Training Manual for Cyclists

With a bike, a turbo trainer, and the right advice, you can beat anyone. No one but Graeme Obree has the clarity of vision to get to the heart of the "problem" of how to improve as a racing cyclist. His innovative approach took him to the top of world cycling, twice breaking the world hour record - a story picked up in his Hollywood biopic The Flying Scotsman. It can draw the same outstanding athletic performance from you.

This Road I Ride: Sometimes It Takes Losing Everything to Find Yourself

Raised in the extreme religious cult called the Children of God, Juliana Buhring was frequently punished for being a rebel and finally broke away. Her soul mate was an explorer seeking the source of unmapped rivers in Africa. When he was killed by a crocodile, her world went dark. To escape paralyzing grief, Buhring set herself a goal. Never having seriously ridden a bike, she set out to ride one around the world.

I'm Here to Win: A World Champion's Advice for Peak Performance

As the winner of the 2010 Ironman Championship in Kona, Hawaii, Chris "Macca" McCormack may be the world's greatest athlete. In I'm Here to Win, McCormack shares his story along with training tips and practical advice to help listeners develop their own routines, diet, exercise programs and race strategies. Chris McCormack has dedicated his life to training for - and winning - the Ironman World Championships, one of the most grueling tests of mental and physical endurance in the world.

Running Man: A Memoir

After a decade-long addiction to crack cocaine and alcohol, Charlie Engle hit bottom with a near-fatal six-day binge that ended in a hail of bullets. As Engle got sober, he turned to running, which became his lifeline, his pastime, and his salvation. He began with marathons, and when marathons weren't far enough he began to take on ultramarathons, races that went for 35, 50, and sometimes hundreds of miles, traveling to some of the most unforgiving places on earth to race.

The Ultra Mindset

Travis Macy has summited glacial peaks in the French Alps, rappelled into limestone caves in China, and raced through parched deserts in Utah. In 2013 he famously won the Leadman Series, a combination of nearly 300 miles of high-altitude trail running and mountain biking over the course of five epic endurance races. Macy achieved all of these victories without elite professional training or even exceptional strength, speed, or flexibility.

Iron War: Dave Scott, Mark Allen, and the Greatest Race Ever Run

The 1989 Ironman World Championship was the greatest race ever in endurance sports. In a spectacular duel that became known as the Iron War, the world's two strongest athletes raced side by side at world-record pace for a grueling 139 miles. Driven by one of the fiercest rivalries in triathlon, Dave Scott and Mark Allen raced shoulder to shoulder through Ironman’s 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike race, and 26.2-mile marathon. After 8 punishing hours, both men would demolish the previous record - and cross the finish line a mere 58 seconds apart.

Publisher's Summary

The Secret Race is a definitive look at the world of professional cycling—and the doping issue surrounding this sport and its most iconic rider, Lance Armstrong—by former Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton and New York Times best-selling author Daniel Coyle.

Over the course of two years, Coyle conducted more than 200 hours of interviews with Hamilton and spoke candidly with numerous teammates, rivals, and friends. The result is an explosive book that takes us, for the first time, deep inside a shadowy, fascinating, and surreal world of unscrupulous doctors, anything-goes team directors, and athletes so relentlessly driven to succeed that they would do anything—and take any risk, physical, mental, or moral—to gain the edge they needed to win.

Tyler Hamilton was once one of the world’s best-liked and top-ranked cyclists—a fierce competitor renowned among his peers for his uncanny endurance and epic tolerance for pain. In the 2003 Tour de France, he finished fourth despite breaking his collarbone in the early stages—and grinding 11 of his teeth down to the nerves along the way. He started his career with the U.S. Postal Service team in the 1990s and quickly rose to become Lance Armstrong’s most trusted lieutenant and a member of his inner circle.

For the first three of Armstrong’s record seven Tour de France victories, Hamilton was by Armstrong’s side, clearing his way. But just weeks after Hamilton reached his own personal pinnacle—winning the gold medal at the 2004 Olympics—his career came to a sudden, ignominious end: He was found guilty of doping and exiled from the sport.

From the exhilaration of his early, naïve days in the peloton, Hamilton chronicles his ascent to the uppermost reaches of this unforgiving sport. In the mid-1990s, the advent of a powerful new blood-boosting drug called EPO reshaped the world of cycling, and a relentless, win-at-any-cost ethos took root. Its psychological toll would drive many of the sport’s top performers to substance abuse, depression, even suicide. For the first time ever, Hamilton recounts his own battle with clinical depression, speaks frankly about the agonizing choices that go along with the decision to compete at a world-class level, and tells the story of his complicated relationship with Lance Armstrong.

A journey into the heart of a never-before-seen world, The Secret Race is a riveting, courageous act of witness from a man who is as determined to reveal the hard truth about his sport as he once was to win the Tour de France.

I normally spread my listening of a book out over a few weeks but the honest, detailed and shocking story that is told meant that I got through it in less than two days.

The book gives an exceptionally good sense of how riding and doping at the professional level worked. The detail about the relationship between riders, doctors and the UCI provides a compelling story about what made professional cycling tick.

For fun I'd suggest you listen to Armstrong's It's Not About The Bike and then listen to this book. The image Lance portrays of himself in the former and the picture painted of him by Tyler could not be more different.

I bought this book because lies fascinate me. Liars too. Cyclists - not so much. That probably has a lot to do with my lukewarm enjoyment of this book.

My other problem was as follows: Either I'm nuts or Tyler Hamilton truly believes that his being a loving person (lots of time spent on how much he loves his folks, his wife, his teammates and the world) means he can do the exact same thing as Lance Armstrong for the very same reasons and not be guilty of the same crime. I'm mystified by this. Also annoyed.

But perhaps Tyler is just being a good domestique. For me, this book has made Lance's lack of apology look far more appealing. In that respect, well done.

After listening to two books a month in 2012 this book is by far the most memorable of the year. Enjoyed the details of how the doping schemes really occurred and the narration is remarkable. "Oh Tyler, you're too fat" as read by the Sean Runnette has become a regular catch phase around the house.

This is one of the best books I have listened to in a VERY long time!! The history itself is so fascinating it beats every piece of fiction out there. It is a secret world that Hamilton reveals and it feels as if he tells us everything. He paints a truly scary but also a sad portrait of Armstrong but he also openly tells of all his own mistakes - the rules he broke and the lies he told. The mindblowing accounts of the extent to which systematic doping took place and the methods applied is one part of it but the tales of the races, the tactics and the intrigues are almost equally interesting. During the beginning of the book I became more and more sceptical towards cycling but later on I found myself being curious and intrigued. I have never understood how some people can spend so much time following bike races but I might just tune in to the next tour de France!

Tyler and Dan "opened the kimono" on pro cycling, the peloton and Lance in this one. It is all here, what they did, how they did it, why the tests don't matter, the corruption and how they kept it all quite. Hamilton focuses the story on himself and his misgivings and also on his teammates (namely Lance) and the organizations that make it all possible. He names names, places and tactics.

What was most surprising to me is not that these guys were doping and getting away with it, but how big of a bully Lance is. I never thought of Lance as a perfect saint or the devil incarnate. I figured him for a driven guy who liked to win and liked to try and help the cause (cancer support) that he is so passionate about. I could get behind that. What I can't accept is how he has railroaded so many people and sullied their reputations because they told the truth. In this sense, he is worse than a cheater.

Where does The Secret Race rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

The overall story is gripping. I couldn't stop listening to it even though I knew much of the back-story. As a cycling fan, Tyler's story opened my eyes to many of the fears I've had throughout the last 15+ years.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Tyler, Lance, Floyd and the peloton.

What does Sean Runnette bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Sean's reading of the book was excellent and captured the appropriate drama.

This book is a real inside look at pro cycling. It's a sad tale of the temptations — perhaps irresistible — to do whatever it takes to be part of that world. Tyler is pretty hard on himself, so it's very believable. It's filled with too many small details to be totally made up.If you care about pro cycling, this is a great book. I couldn't stop listening. It's a bit like a train wreck: You can't not look. If you don't care about pro cycling, you'll be bored to death. (Ask my wife, I played it in the car on a trip.)The reader does a very creditable job. He didn't get in the way and let the story be the star, as he should have.